This is only me describing my personal taste, but:
Almost all video essays and podcasts I would rather just read. It takes half the time. Include pictures, diagrams, and animations if needed. But I can read much faster and retain much better reading than listening to someone talk. Listening at double speed is faster, but can be uncomfortable.
I can imagine some value in some other niches, like you’re saying, but the amount of slop and trash out there is too high for me, and the companies selling it are the worst.
Every time I see some parasocial YouTuber making That Face I just get irritated.
Don’t know why you’d get a downvote for personal preference. I would argue that a lot of the content I watch doesn’t have a suitable book form, so even if I did prefer that method of osmosis, I’d be out of luck.
Got a recommendation for a book (or audiobook) for a nerd like me? I’d describe myself but the internet already knows too much so… Conservation and technology (new or ancient)
Almost all video essays and podcasts I would rather just read.
I don’t think any of the following videos work as reading.
All of them are made from the start as videos (the last one is quite meta in that regard) and if you want to have them as text then you’d need to restructure them from the scratch.
In my experience, you have to be incredibly selective with what you watch. The entirety of what I watch on there is makerspace type crafts, misc educational content, and the occasional video game, with ideally the least emotional commentary possible.
You might be ahead of the curve. I still consume Youtube a lot but my experience is getting worse each and every month. It’s a consistent downward spiral. It’s just a matter of time until I realize “Oh, I haven’t watched Youtube in weeks!” That’s when I know. The people who make decisions at Youtube clearly do not even use their own website or app and there is no way to give feedback either. When they realize how bad it’s gotten it will be too late to course correct. You can’t win users back after they sobered up from your addictive dopamine machine because they stopped coming and the only traffic on your servers are bots.
The people who make decisions at Youtube clearly do not even use their own website or app and there is no way to give feedback either.
Ed Zitron, famously verbose web blog guy, wrote a post about how he thinks most of these big businesses are run by idiots that are out of touch with both the product and the users.
It’s simple: they neither know nor care what the customer wants, barely know how their businesses function, barely know what their products do, and barely understand what their workers are doing, meaning that generative AI feels magical, because it does an impression of somebody doing a job, which is an accurate way of describing how most executives and middle managers operate.
Sometimes I forget people watch YouTube on purpose. Other than music videos and the rare “how do I do this thing in this game?” I just don’t use it
I feel like an alien sometimes. Reading books like some sort of lost time traveler.
There is definitely content on there that I value still
This is only me describing my personal taste, but:
Almost all video essays and podcasts I would rather just read. It takes half the time. Include pictures, diagrams, and animations if needed. But I can read much faster and retain much better reading than listening to someone talk. Listening at double speed is faster, but can be uncomfortable.
I can imagine some value in some other niches, like you’re saying, but the amount of slop and trash out there is too high for me, and the companies selling it are the worst.
Every time I see some parasocial YouTuber making That Face I just get irritated.
Don’t know why you’d get a downvote for personal preference. I would argue that a lot of the content I watch doesn’t have a suitable book form, so even if I did prefer that method of osmosis, I’d be out of luck.
Got a recommendation for a book (or audiobook) for a nerd like me? I’d describe myself but the internet already knows too much so… Conservation and technology (new or ancient)
Is that a fair ask?
You don’t get the animations and other visual aids to understanding like that.
I don’t think any of the following videos work as reading.
All of them are made from the start as videos (the last one is quite meta in that regard) and if you want to have them as text then you’d need to restructure them from the scratch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vfbVVkwdQw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxV14h0kFs0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUF4afxMpQk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoldOz5YyAw
In my experience, you have to be incredibly selective with what you watch. The entirety of what I watch on there is makerspace type crafts, misc educational content, and the occasional video game, with ideally the least emotional commentary possible.
You might be ahead of the curve. I still consume Youtube a lot but my experience is getting worse each and every month. It’s a consistent downward spiral. It’s just a matter of time until I realize “Oh, I haven’t watched Youtube in weeks!” That’s when I know. The people who make decisions at Youtube clearly do not even use their own website or app and there is no way to give feedback either. When they realize how bad it’s gotten it will be too late to course correct. You can’t win users back after they sobered up from your addictive dopamine machine because they stopped coming and the only traffic on your servers are bots.
Ed Zitron, famously verbose web blog guy, wrote a post about how he thinks most of these big businesses are run by idiots that are out of touch with both the product and the users.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/